Some standard transfer properties, viz., molar volume, solubility parameter, the free energy of transfer, primary medium activity coefficient and values of 1000P/M have been determined for hydroxamic acids which are non-electrolytes. An attempt is also made to correlate the partition data of these reagents for a series of organic solvent-aqueous systems, with various aspects of solvent polarity, namely, mu, epsilon, pi*, delta (org) and E-T values. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.